Natividad con san Francisco y san Lorenzo

The painting that hangs over this altar in Palermo is not the real one. On the night of the 17th of October 1969, thieves climbed into the Oratory of San Lorenzo, cut Caravaggio's Nativity out of its frame, and rolled it up in a carpet they took along for the purpose. It has never been recovered. Investigators believe it passed through the hands of the Sicilian Mafia, and informants have given wildly different accounts over the years, that it was eaten by rats in a barn, that it was burned, that it was sold abroad. None has been confirmed. The FBI put it on its list of the world's ten most significant art crimes. Caravaggio painted it in the last year of his life, 1609, on the run and moving between cities. The version on the altar today is a digital facsimile made in 2015 so the space would not stand empty.